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Sunday, May 26, 2013

Manitou Springs, Colorado is a beautiful place. I have called it home for ten years, and I have lived in the immediate vicinity for the majority of my life. That said, I have watched my home slowly disappear. The majority of the population is wonderful: it is truly a community in a world where that is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Unfortunately for Manitou, there is an extremely small but influential cadre of moneyed interests that would like to replace the community with a resort.

The money is winning. There have been a series of grand improvements to the city infrastructure that are not designed for the current population. There have simultaneously been a series of legislative actions taken to criminalize the very things that define community - shared public spaces and the right to peaceably assemble.

I have heard personally from anonymous, well placed individuals that the name of the game is to clear out the hippies to make way for the Cliff House expansion. I have heard from the same source that this is explicitly talked about behind closed doors by members of the city government.

I was a regular attendee of the Soda Springs Park Safety Task Force, and at the point when Matt Carpenter said, "Walking your dog doesn't exactly constitute use of the park, now does it?" I knew I had to leave. The issue at hand was how to create an ordinance that could be used against certain people and be freely violated by others. They had no shame because no records were kept.

For the record, I am far from a hippie, and the issue for me is not one of personal persecution but one of social justice. It is not right for a the government of a city that is predominantly low to lower middle income to attempt to criminalize poverty.

And with that being the core focus of a few members of City Council, I make my leave. I hope that the city can find a sense of equilibrium, but I know all too well that it will not. Goodbye, my home. Goodbye my friends. Goodbye mountains and springs, trails, deer and squirrels.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The City has leased the lot from May 24 to October 1, 2012, in an effort to provide more parking capacity and to determine if parkers will utilize the lot -- press release issued by Manitou Springs City Administrator, Jack Benson

Earlier this year, and well before the Waldo Canyon Fire obliterated
almost everyone’s ideal of a typical Colorado summer, Manitou Springs
city administrator, Jack Benson, decided to experiment with a parking
lot. His hypothesis: leasing a parking lot from the Tajine Alami Restaurant, in
conjunction to the COG Railway’s donation of a shuttle service to
transport people (at no cost to them) from the same parking lot, would
“provide more parking capacity.”As it were, the local Pikes Peak Bulletin,
not capable of asking critical questions and demanding evidence from
city officials, posted a blurb in its August 16, 2012 edition
(“Post-fire effects lead to end of free shuttle”) about the
discontinuing of Benson’s experiment. Instead of pointing out the fact
that the parking lot/shuttle service was an experiment, the Bulletin, in typical cronyism fashion, called the parking lot free.Alas, alas, the parking lot was not free. In fact, if the Bulletin had any decent journalistic aptitude, they would have simply used Google. Has anyone at the Bulletin ever heard of a search engine? Alas, alas, it doesn’t appear so.A
quick Google search promptly reveals that, according to this website,
the city shelled out a princely sum of $1,500 per month for the parking
lot, beginning in May and lasting through October, a six month lease. In
other words, Jack Benson’s failed experiment with a parking lot cost the city
at least $9,000 - an expensive parking lot that sat empty for days and
weeks. And probably will remain so until October, based on the Bulletin’s blurb.

The Bulletin’s
August 16 blurb contained the premise the termination of the shuttle
service was due to a lack of business in Manitou Springs due to the lingering effects from the Waldo Canyon Fire but omitted the
fact that the original agreement for the shuttle service from the COG
Railway was to run between June 16 to August 12.That
means the original agreement expired and was not renewed, probably
because of a variety of factors, one of which was the fire. But to say
the shuttle service ended solely because of the fire without mentioning
the shuttle’s service expiration date is either lazy reporting or a
simple disregard for reporting facts.

Jack Benson gambled and lost. Benson should apologize for wasting taxpayers' money. He should find a way to refund city businesses $9,000 and by businesses, that does not mean those only who work with and for the city government, which is pretty much any person who sets foot in the building that houses the Bulletin.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

I'm not a big fan of boilerplate clauses. In any negotiation, they are basically an admission that insufficient research has gone into a venture, but people are choosing to move ahead anyway. They're a way of saying, "We may be wrong, we don't know, we don't care enough to find out. If you find out we're wrong, we will only admit to it on the specific line items you prove wrong."

A recent Ordinance of City Council contains a boilerplate clause that is extremely troubling to me.

"The City Council hereby declares that it would have passed this ordinance and each part or parts hereof irrespective of the fact that any one part or parts be declared unconstitutional or invalid."

Read that again. And again. Make sure you get what they just wrote into our Municipal Code.

Monday, July 30, 2012

The larger newspapers in the Pikes Peak region, the Gazette and the Independent,
do not cover government news or issues related to Manitou Springs and
its politics for the most part. It may be that the city is too small to
warrant considerable ink and page space devoted to the politics of a
small city with barely a burp over 5,300 souls.

The Pikes Peak Bulletin
is generally considered Manitou Springs’ only newspaper. It has a
subscription list. It has vending machines for people to buy copies. It
has a front page, a sports section, classified ads, an op-ed section.
The Bulletin looks, smells, and seems like a newspaper in the same mold as the Gazette and Independent.

The Bulletin, a weekly publication, in fact, shares one commonality with the bigger Independent(also a weekly) with the notable exception that the Independent
is free and constantly updates their websites (Facebook, Twitter, etc),
providing a continuous stream of information, news, and updates to the
public. The daily Gazette also offers fresh news content and information on their websites as well.

Meanwhile, the Bulletin does not. It is true the Bulletin
does have a website but one must purchase a subscription to have access
to the contents (news, information, updates) within the website. Both
the Gazette and Independent do not have such restrictions.

So, what is the Bulletin
then, if it is not a true journalism driven newspaper? A glorified
classified ads? A voice for city government? A propaganda tool?

During the Waldo Canyon Fire evacuations, most city officials and residents left the city, including it seems, the Bulletin.
Online, that fact was magnified once social media (Facebook, Twitter,
etc.) began informing the public of the happenings, news, and updates
related to Manitou Springs and the fire. It was as if the Bulletin
and city officials decided an evacuation was sufficient reason to
altogether cease the reporting of anything to city
residents, leaving them to fend for themselves amid a sea of confusion during the hours of that early Sunday morning when evacuations were ordered.

Wander online today and you might discover a happy plethora of
websites devoted to Manitou Springs. Why, you can search Facebook and discover
the Chamber of Commerce’s So Many Things in Manitou Springs page
praising discounts offered daily by local businesses.

But
there is a huge void. The closest one can find in terms of news
content related to Manitou Springs and its government is the Pikes Peak Bulletin. As illustrated in last week’s post (Benson’s Cronyism), and unfortunately, the Bulletin
doesn’t seem interested or capable of doing investigative stories,
in-depth analyses, or anything remotely critical of city government and
officials.

Information
creates ideas and vice-versa. Information creates solutions to
problems. The competition of ideas is a long-held American process that
has created untold improvements for Americans. Debates and discussions
about information reported in news media are also part of an important
American tradition. We see this everyday online, on TV, at the coffee
shop when people discuss the latest talking points made by any
presidential candidate anytime within the last 15 minutes. Ideas and
information are at the heart of today’s modern world.

It
is generally and often noted by many involved in Manitou Springs’
political arena that the city’s residents are politically apathetic,
preferring not to vote or participate in elections in large numbers. One
reason for that may be the too-cozy relationship between the Bulletin and city government, reinforced by the Bulletin’s
lack of a coherent identity (journalism or propaganda pet), and its
ability to produce one-sided political stories created by city
officials.

One,
obvious way to reduce the rampant political and voting apathy in
Manitou Springs is to increase the amount of information available to
residents. Today, the Bulletin
provides outdated and mostly useless information about local government
to the public, forcing residents to look elsewhere. But there are no
other news media outlets dedicated to and located in Manitou Springs, a fact the Bulletin’s publishers and city officials seem to benefit from.

There
are more important issues to be reported about Manitou Springs than the
incessant whining on the part of a group of city officials who seem to
have nothing better to do with their time than engage in petty, dirty
politics.

Here are some ideas for the Bulletin
to consider reporting about and for residents to debate: reduce the
size of city government. Reduce taxes. Improve and increase
accountability and transparency for city government and officials.
Increase community collaborations. Increase community-building. Improve
communication between residents and the city government in all aspects,
and on and on.

And of course, the all-important one: is the Bulletin a news publication or an outdated form of glorified government spam?

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Mere
weeks after a major fire threatened to erase Manitou Springs from
geographical maps in libraries around the world, it was a surprise and
disappointment to read in last week’s Pikes Peak Bulletin
that city administrator Jack Benson’s priorities are skewed. Compassion
and concern for residents seems to have been buried underneath the
political aims of city council - with the Bulletin’s help.Apparently, and quoting the Bulletin’s
July 19th article (“Council hopes ordinance deters Soda Springs stage
loiterers, vandals”), Benson told the Manitou Springs city council last
Tuesday, “We have to draw a line in the dirt on what we’re going to
tolerate and what we’re not going to tolerate.” Benson was referring to
his support of a new ordinance recently passed by the council that will
require people to obtain a permit to use Soda Springs park, in
particular, the stage.What’s the issue with the stage, then?Initially,
the Soda Springs park dog-and-pony show began early this year when
officials complained too many people were loitering near the Triangle, a
popular area near Soda Springs park. Then an issue was raised by city officials about crime on Ruxton near the Soda Springs park. Then came something about a proposed anti-smoking ordinance for and near Soda Springs park.Then, and after all of that, when a resident pointed out the Triangle was near the park (and its stage), city officials such as Benson simply - and in figurative literalness - moved
their rhetorical claims (crime, smoking, loitering) away from the
Triangle and towards Soda Springs park. Clearly, city officials are more
interested in escaping public scrutiny of their claims and actions by
constantly shifting lines in political dirt to suit their whims.Benson claims there is damage to the stage but the Bulletin
did not print any evidence or at least seem interested in asking for
such proof from Benson. Instead, there’s only the implication that
because certain peopleloiter in the park and the stage, there is damage to the stage.Said
Benson, “I don’t care if it’s a juvenile or an adult, they shouldn’t be
damaging our property. We have to put something in place that deters
that kind of behavior.” And what is the damage, Mr. Benson? What kind of people are doing the damage? What behavior by what people doing what damage to the stage? Again, the Bulletin doesn’t seem interested in asking for details.It
serves little purpose to explore the dark, seedy side of Benson’s view,
other than to ostracize a class of people for their supposed and
alleged behavior. But the Bulletin’s story does raise an issue that has been altogether ignored: the too-cozy relationship between city officials and the Bulletin.Rather than ask for evidence or details, or present an alternative view to Benson’s, the Bulletin simply passed the political baton from Benson to Roger Miller, another city official,
who simply repeated other city officials’ previous implications and
generalized statements and claims. Miller is the city’s Chamber of
Commerce operating chief.And
what did Miller have to say about the stage? “From a personal
standpoint, I’m getting tired of cleaning up.” Cleaning up what? When do
you clean the stage, Mr. Miller? The story doesn’t say, and not
surprisingly, Miller didn’t offer any specifics to support his claim.Meanwhile,
sidewalks in town are cleaned daily by a crew of city employees. They
are paid to clean vomit off sidewalks, sweep cigarette butts off the
curbs, pick-up trash, and otherwise beautify the downtown area. And yet,
for some strange reason, the Bulletin makes no reference as to whether or not the same crews do (or do not) clean the stage in Soda Springs park.If city employees do clean the stage, then that is what they’re paid to do, and Miller’s claim is pointless and moot. If they are not cleaning the stage, then that warrants consideration as a possible solution to an untidy stage before proposing inane ordinances based on generalized claims and little or no evidence or facts. Meanwhile,
other city parks have dog waste dispensers that seem to be ignored by
certain people, probably city officials. Will the city council create an
ordinance that prohibits the public from using those parks without a
permit issued by city government?In
a time of witnessing heart-warming tales of compassion and caring by
communities affected by the Waldo Canyon Fire, it is disheartening to
see city officials openly and blatantly declare they “do not care” about
the people who live in our city. It is obvious that Benson, and even
Miller, do not seem genuinely concerned about Manitou Springs and prefer
to continue targeting classes of people they find undesirable.And the Bulletin? It needs to stop serving city government and become its biggest skeptic.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Quartz rocks. You may have seen them, up on the hillsides and below your shoes, during your walkabouts in and around the area you call home. But what is quartz, really? I mean, if it looks like a rock, acts like a rock, and rocks when you bump it with your toe, it stands to reason that what you have discovered is likely to be a rock, and not—as your inscrutable neighbor would have you believe—a source of Great Power during times of economic uncertainty.

Having spent considerable time and effort investigating similar phenomena, I found it excruciatingly easy to make the leap to quartz, and thence to other types of rock that refused to support my weight no matter how much I sniffed and dabbed at my eye. If there's one thing I learned from sandstone, it's that.

Another thing I learned is that common household appliances can be pressed into service for all manner of scientific experimentation, but that doesn't necessarily mean the manufacturer will honor the warranty. What it does mean is that the 2.4 GHz frequency your microwave oven uses to warm leftovers is the same frequency used by your wireless router to contact the suspicious object hovering above your cottage. Cheese, too, can be converted to its liquid form using either of these microwave sources, but quartz is not cheese, at least in the dietary sense. Unlike cheese, quartz oscillates in the presence of electromagnetic frequencies—which often results in humanlike speech—hence my particular interest in kitchen appliances.

As you might expect, this brings up the same question I asked in the third sentence, namely, what is quartz, really? I don't know, but I think it may be some sort of rock. Putting a chunk of it in the microwave didn't tell me anything, but that may have more to do with the extreme temperature of the fragment I held up to my ear after the explosion.

On the other hand, incommunicado quartz is mysterious quartz. Dumb as a rock? I wonder.